Ben-DutkaFirst, we hear from one Ubisoft developer that the PS3 can't handle AI as well as the Xbox 360. And now, in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, another Ubisoft team is defending the PS3 with some choice statements.
The team behind one of the most accomplished productions out there, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 , says that developing games for the PS3 is "no harder" than developing them for the 360. In the face of analyst reports that say Sony's console is to blame due to it's overly complicated hardware, this team – a BAFTA-award winning team, at that – says it's simply about "getting up to speed" with a new console.
"It's wrong to say it's harder to code on the PlayStation 3, it's just something that needs to be learned," said Yann Le Tensorer, co-founder of Ubisoft's Tiwak studio and co-creator of the Yeti engine powering GRAW and the upcoming Beowulf game. "It's not harder to develop on the PS3 than it is on the 360, it's just a different console. Developers might says it's harder because it just takes time to understand the technology, we're still early in the lifecycle."
Le Tensorer goes on to say that progress will be made with the system; the more developers learn, the more the "entire community will benefit." He finishes- "We need all developers to learn from the console, it was the same with the PlayStation 2. Our team are more than happy with the PlayStation 3."
International brand manager for the publisher, Adrian Lacey, believes that GRAW2 (scheduled to arrive on the PS3 next month) is shaping up quite nicely, and it's due entirely to "forward planning" from the developers.
"Because we built the engine for this generation of hardware we've been very well placed – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter hit that level of quality early in the cycle when the 360 first came out because we had our engine in mind for PS3, 360 and PC from the very beginning," Lacey said.
Ubisoft is currently working on another interesting title, this one based on the upcoming film, "Beowulf." The game is scheduled for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and Lacey says there's still "plenty to learn" about both Sony's and Microsoft's consoles at this point.
"For us it's been a learning curve and technology changes very quickly. We're learning step-by-step to use the PS3 to its fullest capacity," he said. "If you take the PS2 for example, when God of War come out people saw it was tremendous. But it wasn't until the end of the PS2 cycle that we've seen the machine being pushed to its fullest."
Well, all of this is something we've been screaming about ever since the PS3 launched last year. It's good to finally hear some developers admit to it, especially when the situation appears quite obvious: it takes time to effectively and successfully develop for a new console.
Related Game(s): Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2